Friday, December 31, 2010

The Failure of Conservatism

Ya, ya... two in one day. I'm home, there's a nasty ass blizzard outside and I'm bored..... So now you get to put up with two pearls of wisdom in a single day... Lucky you!

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I was in High School in the late seventies. Believe me, there was virtually nothing “Conservative” about the 70’s. Society has undoubtedly swung wildly to the right over the past 30 years. For those of you who doubt that fact, let’s consider some of the everyday experiences during my youth:

 Nobody wore a bicycle helmet, hell, we didn’t even owned a helmet. My High School had a Smokers Pit. A big area outside where both teachers AND students would go smoke between classes. The “dirt bags” as we called them, toked out there….. that’s smoked pot if you didn’t understand that. Nobody got arrested for drinking and driving. The cops would take your booze and send you home… even if you were under age. Everyone took guns to schools… we all went hunting after class. PG Movies showed frontal nudity. Doubt me? Rent the movie Hooper (1978-Burt Reynolds). There’s a birthday scene where a gal jumps out of a birthday cake - big titties flopping around.. it’s PG movie.. Kids NEVER talked back to adults, and when they, they got hit… even if they were not your kids.

Musically: Charlie Daniels still called the Devil a “son of a bitch”, There was still “Bullshit” in Pink Floyd’s money. Pete Townshend still asked “who the fuck are you?”.

As horrible and foreign as that may seem: We could play outside and never worry Houses, cars and bikes, never got locked. We said hello and good day to all the neighbors Everyone had a retirement Virtually nobody paid for healthcare, it was ALL covered by insurance.

Now that we’ve made everything unacceptable, including disciplining our own children, it begs the question… Are we better off? Is society better? I'm not feeling the love.....

As more and more “words” have become unacceptable, as our neighborhood shrinks because we fear strangers. It’s pretty clear that this mass swing towards conservatism has done little but make everyone uncomfortable with everything. When you tell people it’s ok to feel bad because someone says a “bad word”, you’ve just opened up Victim Mentality. Every body now deserves to be happy without having to work for it. Why, because it’s someone else’s fault.

The more you make an issue of anything, the more it becomes a social problem. There is no drinking minimum age in Europe, nor is there a problem with alcoholism. Is there a relationship between the two... you bet your bippy...

It’s the same with words…. Ignorance ‘hides” words, keeps them from the public eye. It’s just another form of censorship. Only by listening, understanding and learning do we remove the power of harm from words.

Lenny Bruce had a good point. Here’s Dustin Hoffman doing a Lenny Bruce routine from the 1974 Movie “Lenny”

It seems to me that “conservatism” has given us little more than provide mental justification to move jobs overseas by the millions. social acceptable for 2% to own 90%. Never in the history of this country has such a huge pile of wealth shifted from middle class to the rich than in the past 2 decades.

We have unquestionably swung wildly to the right with insidious consequences. It’s good for the rich, the uptight and those without coping skills – but leaves a devastated society in it’s wake.